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Virginia Declaration of Rights and 
Cardinal Bellarmine 



By 

GAILLARD HUNT 



Riprint from The Catholic Historical Review. Vol. Ill (1917), pp. 276-289 



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THE VIRGINIA DECLARATION OF RIGHTS 
AND CARDINAL BELLARMINE 

The object of this essay is to discover what was the immediate 
source of that part of the Declaration of Rights of Virginia and 
of the Declaration of Independence which proclaimed the natural 
equality of man and that the right of governing is derived from 
the people. These two pronouncements have had tremendous 
consequences, for the theory of the American State rests upon 
them, and they have come to be the foundation stone of govern- 
ment in nearly all the nations of the modern world. 

In framing the Virginia Declaration the English Bill of 
Rights was the natural model, because of the resemblance of 
the events immediately preceding the birth of the one document 
to those which preceded the birth of the other. The English 
parliament which in 1689 declared that James II had forfeited 
the crown, and which prescribed the conditions upon which 
William of Orange was accepted as King, was the prototype of the 
Virginia Convention which put George III off the American 
throne, and proclaimed the principles upon which a new govern- 
ment must be founded to be acceptable. In its contents, however, 
the Virginia document followed the English model only in its 
less important features, and even in these the resemblance is 
but partial. The first three Virginia paragraphs saying that all 
men are by nature equally free and independent; that all power 
belongs to the people; that government is instituted for the 
common benefit, and that when it fails to confer common benefit 
a majority of the people have a right to change it — these funda- 
mental principles are not in the English Bill at all. Thus, the 
Virginians used the English model in no spirit of agreement or 
imitation, for they ignored its most important provisions and 
went far beyond Its most radical intentions. 

The study of government has always been a favorite occu- 
pation of higher minds, and the discussion of the problem of 
how far men may enjoy their freedom and submit to government, 
what are their rights and duties, and what are the rights and 

1 



% GAILLARD HUNT 

duties of those who govern them are as old as mankind itself. 
In 1776 men were discussing these things and also the theory of 
government itself. Some of them had decided that it was a 
contract between the governed and the governors; others believed 
all power belonged to the people; others were content to trace its 
origin to the family relation, and others thought that rulers 
derived their right to rule from the Supreme Ruler of the Universe. 
In the beginning of the settlement of America these questions 
were not of practical importance, for pioneers in a wilderness had 
only problems of personal government to deal with. Questions 
of liberty did not obtrude themselves upon men who could go 
at will through a boundless country and make their homes 
wherever they pleased. The Jamestown court book, which 
begins in 1622 and is the earliest government record of the 
English occupation, shows this, for the chief function of the 
government was to punish small offences against law and order, 
and wrongs committed by one man against another. A hundred 
years later, however, governmental conditions had become more 
complex, the country having passed the earliest pioneer stage, 
having increased greatly in population and having become 
valuable to the nation which owned it. When that nation began 
to restrain its American subjects, to exercise authority over 
them and to tax them, neglected theories of government were 
revived and they began to study them with a practical object 
in view. They felt that they were ill-used, and read and discussed 
so as to give form to their grievances. 

Ready at hand was the classic literature of Athens and Rome 
which all educated men knew fairly well. The civilization of 
those states was understood and entered into the daily thought 
of the time. When the Americans came to create governments 
of their own they adapted to their use some of the institutions 
and nomenclature of the classical period. It would be beyond 
the scope of this article, however, to try to find the classical spring 
of the thoughts which were in the mind of George Mason when 
he wrote the Declaration of Rights and of Thomas Jefferson 
when he wrote the Declaration of Independence, nor is it neces- 
sary to do so, for their immediate inspiration came from more 
modern sources. 

Several authors must be cleared from the field before we 



?\- 



VIRGINIA DECLARATION OF RIGHTS 3 

examine those who really participated in forming the doctrines 
under consideration. Montesquieu, Rousseau and James Berg, 
whose names are often connected with them, really did not 
influence them. The Spirit of the Laws was studied in America, 
but it did not present the theory of government in the way the 
Revolutionists were seeking to present it. It was an analysis 
of the various forms of government; they were seeking for a 
statement of the basis of the form they were determined to 
have. 

Rousseau's writings were less widely known than Montes- 
quieu's. It is probable that Jefferson knew them, because his 
mental appetite was omnivorous; but George Mason did not 
know French and there is no reason to suppose that he ever 
read the Contrat Social or the Discours sur Vorigine de VinegalitS 
parmi les hommes. Rousseau's writings had not obtained currency 
in Virginia in 1776. 

James Berg wrote seventy -five years after Montesquieu. 
His book. Political Disquisitions, or An Enquiry into public 
Errors, Defects, and Abuses of the British Government, ap- 
peared only in part in 1775, rather too late to have rendered 
service in May, 1776, even if it had discussed general principles 
which it did not do. Berg denounced the evils which had arisen 
in England, in the hope of "restoring the constitution and saving 
the state." He defended the colonies in their controversy with 
the parent country. The American edition of his book was 
published in Philadelphia under the encouragement of a number 
of prominent Americans, many of them members of the Conti- 
nental Congress, among them George Washington and Thomas 
Jefferson. Jefferson praised the book, but it did not help him 
when he drew up the Declaration of Independence. 

To go on to those who had a somewhat closer relationship to 
the Declaration, who were in fact the natural precursors of 
those who had a real influence in forming it, we come upon 
Thomas Hobbes and Richard Hooker, who paved the way which 
Algernon Sidney and John Locke walked with so much confidence 
many years later. A hundred years before Rousseau, Hobbes 
expounded Rousseau's doctrine of government. Hobbes' chief 
book. Leviathan, or the Matter, Forme, and Power of a Common- 
wealth Ecclesiastical and Civil, was published in London in 1651. 



4 GAILLARD HUNT 

It was a scientific discussion of the natural man and the artificial 
aggregation of men (the Leviathan) called the Commonwealth. 
He defined a commonwealth thus: 

A commonwealth is said to be instituted, when a multitude of men 
do agree, and covenant, every one, that to whatsoever man or assembly 
of men shall be given by the major part, the right to present the person 
of them all (that is to say, to be their representative): Every one, as 
well he that voted for it, as he that voted against it, shall authorize all 
the actions and judgments of that man or assembly of men in the same 
manner, as if they were his own, to the end, to live peaceably amongst 
themselves, and be protected against other men. 

From this institution of a commonwealth are derived all the rights 
and faculties of him or them on whom sovereign power is conferred by 
the consent of the people assembled. ^ 

He argued against the right of rebellion because it broke the 
covenant made by the subject with the sovereign. 

The Treatise on Ecclesiastical Polity of Richard Hooker was 
published in 1594-1597. He said: 

The lawful Power of making laws to command whole Political 
Societies of men, belongeth so properly unto the same entire societies, 
that for any Prince or Potentate of what kind soever upon Earth to 
exercise the same of himself, and not either by express Commission 
immediately and Personally received from God, or else by authority 
derived the first from their Consent upon whose Persons they impose 
Laws; it is no better than meer Tj'ranny. Laws they are not therefore 
which Public approbation hath not made so. But approbation not 
only give, who personally declare their assent by voyce, signe, or act, 
but also when others do it in their names by right originally at least 
derived from them.* 

Under the hands of Algernon Sidney and John Locke this 
doctrine was advanced to a system of popular government; and 
those two writers must now be brought to the reader's particular 
attention, for they received a great deal of attention from the 
fathers of the republic. It cannot be said that they are now 
wholly forgotten. They are alluded to, however, oftener than 
they are read, and no apology is needed for quoting from them to 
a modern reader. 

Algernon Sidney was a hero to the Americans of 1776. His 
romantic life and tragic death held the public attention, and his 

* Leviathan, Edition of 1651, p. 88. 

* The Laws of Ecclesiastical Politie. Book 1, Sec. 9, p. 28, Edition of 1622. 



/ 



VIRGINIA DECLARATION OF RIGHTS 5 

writings were eagerly read. It was nearly a hundred years since 
he had been beheaded for asserting the right of the people to 
govern, but the interest in him was still fresh. A new edition 
of the account of his trial and of his disquisition on government 
had appeared in 1763, only thirteen years before the American 
revolt. Sidney had been charged, among other things, with 
having written seditious libels, the worst being, as the arraign- 
ment recited, the following: 

The power originally in the people of England is delegated unto the 
parliament. He (the most serene lord, Charles II now King of England 
meaning) is subject unto the law of God, as he is a man; to the people 
that makes him a king inasmuch as he is a king: the law sets a measure 
unto that subjection, and the parliament judges of the particular cases 
thereupon arising. He must be content to submit his interest unto theirs, 
since he is no more than any one of them in any other respect than that 
he is, by the consent of all, raised above any other. If he doth not like 
this condition, he may renounce the crown; but if he receives it upon 
that condition (as all majestrates do the power they receive) and swear 
to perform it, he must expect that the performance will be exacted, or 
revenge taken by those that he hath betrayed. ^ 

At the trial the Government showed that when Sidney was 
arrested, a treatise alleged to be in his handwriting was found in 
his study, which was designed to persuade the people of England 
"that it is lawful, nay that they have a right to set aside their 
prince, in case it appear to them that he hath broken the trust laid 
upon him by the people." "Then he falls to reasoning," said the 
attorney general, "and uses great reasoning in the case, that 
all the power of the prince is originally in the people; and applies 
that discourse, that the power of the king was derived from the 
people, upon trust; and they had already declared the king had 
invaded their rights, and therefore he comes to argue, that they 
might resume that original power they had conferred."^ 

Sidney insisted that the Government had not proved that the 
writings produced were his. "But," he added, "my lord, it is a 
polemical discourse; it seems to be an answer to Filmer, which 
is not calculated for any particular government in the world; it 
(Filmer's book) goes only upon these general principles, that 



* Page 108 of the supplement to the Edition of 1763. 
«/d., pp. 115, 116. 



6 GAILLARD HUNT 

according to the universal law of God and nature there is but one 
government in the world, and that is entire and absolute." ^ 

The trial was dramatic and the Lord Chief Justice, Jeffries, 
who presided, was at his worst. The jury was packed, Sidney 
was refused a copy of his indictment, and overt acts were accepted 
as proved by the testimony of one perjured witness. The Chief 
Justice interrupted Sidney when he attempted to speak in his 
own behalf and showed a savage determination to kill him. 
When he sentenced him, Sidney uttered a short prayer that his 
country might not suffer in atonement for his blood, but, if he 
must be avenged, that the weight of punishment might fall upon 
those who had maliciously prosecuted him for righteousness' 
sake. To this, the Chief Justice replied : 

I pray God work in you a temper fit to go into the other world, 
for I see you are not fit for this. 

And Sidney said: 

My lord, feel my pulse (holding out his hand), and see if I am dis- 
ordered. I bless God, I never was in better temper, than I am now.* 

He was executed on December 7, 1683. That day he gave to 
the Sheriffs a paper in which he recounted the unfairness of his 
trial and said of the writings used against him: 

They plainly appear to relate to a large treatise written long since 
in answer to Filmer's book, which by all intelligent men is thought to be 
grounded in wicked principles, equally pernicious to magistrates and 
people. 

He gave the scope of the treatise: 

. . . And I am persuaded to believe that God had left nations 
to the liberty of setting up such governments as best pleases themselves. 

That magistrates were set up for the good of nations, not nations for 
the honour and glory of magistrates. 

That those laws were to be observed, and the oaths taken by them-, 
, having the force of a contract between magistrates and people, could not 
be violated without danger of dissolving the whole fabric. 

That usurpation could give no right; and the most dangerous of all 
enemies to Kings were they, who raising their power to an exorbitant 
height, allowed to usurpers all the rights belonging to it.' 

Bishop Burnet said of Sidney: "He had studied the history 



6 Id., pp. 134, 135. 

*Id., 168. 

- Id., pp. .37, 38, of the Memoirs. 



VIRGINIA DECLARATION OF RIGHTS 7 

of government in all its branches, beyond any man I ever knew/* 
The author of the memoir which preceded his Discourses on 
Government said: "In short, it is one of the noblest books that 
ever the mind of man produced; and we cannot wish a greater or 
more extensive blessing to the world, than than it may be every- 
where read, and its principles universally received and propa- 
gated." 

The copy of this noble book which Thomas Jefferson used 
lies before me — a handsome folio, 497 pages of the Discourses, 
198 pages of Sidney's letters and the account of this trial, the 
whole prefaced by 46 pages of the Memoir. This was the 
edition of 1763, edited by Thomas Hollis, known in England as 
"the Republican," the great-nephew of Thomas Hollis, the 
benefactor of Harvard college. The first edition of the book had 
appeared in 1698. Americans liked to connect Sidney with 
themselves. They believed (probably erroneously) that he had 
assisted William Penn in drawing up the enlightened form of 
government which Penn had given to Pennsylvania in 1682. 
Children were called Algernon Sidney, newspaper writers used 
the name as a pen name, gentlemen called their country places 
Sidney. For many years after the Revolution there still sur- 
vived evidence of the deep impression he had made upon the 
American mind. There was an American edition of his Discourses 
published in Philadelphia as late as 1804. A copy of the book 
was in every large library in 1776; every reading man had read 
it in part or in whole. The opening sentence of the Discourses 
ran: 

Having lately seen a book, entitled "Patriarcha," written by Sir 
Robert Filmer, concerning the universal and undistinguished right 
of all kings, I thought a time of leisure might well be employed in examin- 
ing his doctrine, and the questions arising from it: which seem so far to 
concern all mankind, that besides the influence upon our future life, they 
. may be said to comprehend all that in this world deserves to be cared for. 

In Patriarcha there was a quotation from the Cardinal 
Bellarmine to the effect that men were created equal, upon which 
Sidney remarked of Filmer: 

"He absurdly imputes to the school divines that which was 
taken up by them as a common notion, written in the heart of 
every man, denied by none, but such as were degenerated into 



8 GAILLARD HUNT 

beasts." And again: "Though the schoolmen were corrupt, 
they were neither stupid nor unlearned; they could not but see 
that which all men said, nor lay more approved foundations, 
than that man is naturally free; that he cannot justly be deprived 
of that liberty without cause;" etc. Of governments: "Those 
only can be called just which are established by the consent of 
nations."* Of democracy: "And of all governments, democracy, 
in which every man's liberty is least restrained because every 
man hath an equal part, would certainly prove to be the most 
just, rational and natural."^ At the same time he insisted that 
a democracy never had existed and was not possible except for a 
small town. He advocated a popular mixed government. Of 
popular right over government he said: "We say in general 'He 
that institutes, may also abrogate;' most especially when the 
institution is not only by but for himself. If the multitude 
therefore do institute the multitude may abrogate; and they 
themselves, or those who succeed in the same right, can only 
be fit judges of the performance of the ends of the institution." i° 

There is much discussion of the Old Testament and the support 
which Filmer sought to derive from it for his theory that govern- 
ment comes from the power of the fathers over the children. 

Following after Sidney and as widely read, although not so 
popular nor so interesting, was John Locke. His essays were in 
all libraries, but they derived no contributing interest from 
his personal career. When his Two Treatises on Government 
appeared in 1690 he incurred no danger from their publication, 
for the Revolution of 1688 had put a king on the throne who 
derived his right to rule from the consent of the multitude. 
Locke's doctrines were as acceptable to William of Orange as 
Filmer's would have been to James I or as they were to Charles I. 
Like Sidney, Locke wrote in reply to Filmer. He described his 
two treatises thus : 

"In the former the false principles and foundation of Sir 
Robert Filmer and his followers are detected and overthrown: 
the latter is an essay concerning the true origin, extent and end 



8 Page 155. 
• Page 152. 
" Page 15. 



VIRGINIA DECLARATION OF RIGHTS 9 

of civil government." He says of Filmer: "His system lies 

m a little compass, it is no more but this: 

" That all government is absolute monarchy/ 

"And the ground he builds on is this, That no man is born 

free. *^ 

A few extracts will show Locke's philosophy: 

To understand political power right, and derive it from its origin 
we must consider what state all men are naturally in, and that is, a state 
of perfect freedom to order their actions and dispose of their possessions 
and persons, as they think fit, within the bounds of the law of nature 
without asking leave, or depending upon the will of any other man. 

A state also of equality, wherein all the power and jurisdiction is 
reciprocal, no one having more than another; there being nothing more 
evident, than that creatures of the same species and rank, promiscuously 
born to all the same advantages of nature, and the use of the same 
faculties, should be equal one amongst another without subordination 
or subjection: unless the lord and master of them all should by any 
manifest declaration of his will, set one above another, and confer on him 
by an evident and clear appointment, an undoubted right to dominion 
and sovereignity.' "^^ 

Men being, as has been said, by nature all free, equal, and inde-* 
pendent, no one can be put out of this estate, and subjected to the 
pohtical power of another, without his own consent.^* 

These aphorisms he repeated often and made the basis of his 
essay. 

Now let us see who was this Filmer of whom Sidney and 
Locke had so much to say, Sidney's reply to him having brought 
his head to the block. In his day he was popular and had many 
readers and followers. He preached a simple creed— that Kings 
rule by divme right and that the unthinking devotion and obedi- 
ence of their subjects belongs to them by God's ordinance. Any 
man could understand that doctrine and many men had cheer- 
fully laid down their lives in support of it. It was age old-as 
old as the opposing doctrine that all governing power comes from 
the multitude. Macaulay says that Filmer formed into a system 
the theories which became prominent under James I. Filmer's 
writings d id, in fact, follow those of James. The King's Defense 

" Works, edition of 18»4, Vol. iv, p. 213. 
" Id., p. 340. 
" Id., p. 394. 



10 GAILLARD HUNT 

of True Monarchie might well be a preface to Patriarcha. So 
may the King's treatise on witches, Daemonology, be read in 
connection with Filmer's *' Advertisement of the Jurymen of 
England touching Witches." There was still another point of 
resemblance between the two authors — both of them essayed to 
reply to the Cardinal Bellarmine, James in defense of the test 
oath which Catholics would not take, and Filmer in defense of 
the divine right of kings, a doctrine which Bellarmine denied. 

Sir Robert Filmer, Bart., like Algernon Sidney, but in a less 
tragic degree, suffered persecution because of his opinions on 
government. During the civil wars in England he adhered to 
Charles I, and, it was said, had been imprisoned in 1644, while his 
house was plundered ten times. 

A few of his writings appeared anonymously during his life- 
time, but the most important of them was not published till 
1680, twenty-seven years after his death. The full title was, 
Patriarcha or the Natural Power of Kings, by the Learned Sir 
Robert Filmer, Baronet. The argument was that the doctrine 
of the natural liberty of man was new, plausible and dangerous, 
that the royal authority began before the flood with the patriarchs 
from whom all kings were descended; that there was no example 
in Scripture of a people choosing its King; that popular govern- 
ment was more bloody than tyranny; that the king being ap- 
pointed by God, his subjects could not judge nor correct him, as 
he was above human laws. He said : "It appears little less than 
a paradox which Bellarmine and others afllrm of the freedom of 
the multitude to choose what rulers they please." 
/ Filmer's contemporaries generally agreed with him. John 
■ Locke and Sidney sought to disprove his theories by examples 

, and utterances taken from the source whence Filmer drew most 

\of his support — the Bible. Filmer found the origin of govern- 
ment in the family and fatherhood; Hobbes and the rest found 

I it in a contract between the governed and the governors, and here 

\Filmer was right. 

One of those whom Filmer answered was Philip Hunton. He 
had written a Treatise on Monarchy in 1643 in which he said: 
"God does not bind any people to this or that form of government 
till they by their own act bind themselves." Filmer declared 
that they never bound themselves. He said that the earliest gov- 



VIRGINIA DECLARATION OF RIGHTS 11 

ernments had been absolute monarchies, and he was right again. 

Robert Francis Romulus Bellarmine, to whom Filmer replied, 
was one of the most famous churchmen and statesmen of his 
day. He is still well known to Catholic clergymen, and to the 
Protestant clergy in a less degree, but to laymen his is not a 
familiar name. He was born at Montepulciano in 1542 and died 
in 1621. He was a Jesuit priest, teacher of the humanities at 
Florence and Mondovi, a professor and preacher at Louvain, 
where Protestants as well as Catholics went to hear him. He was 
consecrated a cardinal in 1599. In 1576 he began to issue his 
controversial writings. They made a sensation in England, and, 
as he was the champion of papacy, vindications of Protestantism 
often took the form of answers to him. His works crossed the 
Atlantic. There was a copy in the library at Princeton where 
x/James Madison, a member of the Committee which framed the 
Virginia Declaration of Rights, had graduated. Probably he 
had read it, for at this period of his life he read everything he 
could lay his handfe on, and was deeply versed in religious 
controversy. 

There were copies of some of his books in Virginia. Old 
Protestant ministers remember that when they studied divinity 
at the Episcopal High School near Alexandria they heard Bellar- 
mine quoted. Several members of the committee which drew 
up the Declaration of Rights had been educated in England — 
Thomas Ludwell Lee probably, and John Blair certainly. It 
would have been difficult for them to escape some acquaintance 
with Bellarmine while they were studying in England. Eleven 
of the twenty-three members of the committee had gone to 
William and Mary College, where religious controversy raged. 
They, too, must have heard of the Italian controversialist from 
the answers which had been made to him. In 1722 there had 
been published in London a free translation by Thomas Foxton 
of Bellarmine's Joys of the Blessed: Being a Practical Discourse 
Concerning the Eternal Happiness of the Saints in Heaven, 
Bellarmine was not unpopular in England even among those 
who were most inimical to his faith. 

It is Bellarmine's remarks on earthly government, however, 
not his writings on things celestial, that concern us here, and 
Filmer stated them fairly. Taking a number of the Cardinal's 



12 GAILLARD HUNT 

aphorisms to be found here and there in his writings but chiefly 
in De Potestate Pontificis (see, for instance, Lil 1, Cap. vi, p. 257) 
he gives them thus on the fourth page of Patriarchal and I repro- 
duce his italics and capitals. 

To make evident the Grounds of this Question, about the Natural 
Liberty of Mankind, I will lay down some passages of Cardinal Bellarmine, 
that may best unfold the State of this controversie. Secular or Civil 
Power (saith he) is instituted by men; It is in the -people, unless they bestow 
it on a Prince. This Power is immediately in the whole Multitude, as in 
the subject of it; for this Power is in the Divine Law, but the Divine Law 
hath given this power to no particular man. If the Positive Law he taken 
away, there is left no Reason why amongst a Multitude (who are Equal) one 
rather than another should hear Rule over the Rest. Power is given by the 
multitude to one man, or to more, by the same Law of Nature; for the Common- 
wealth cannot exercise this Power, therefore it is bound to bestow it upon 
some One man or some Few. It depends upon the Consent of the multitude 
to ordain over themselves a King Counsel or other Magistrates; and if there 
be a lawful cause the multitude may change the Kingdom into an Aristocracy 
or Democracy. Thus far Bellarmine; in which passages are comprised 
the strength of all that I have read or heard produced for the Nat- 
ural Liberty of the Subject. 

But Bellarmine's doctrine was epitomized by Filmer on the 
opening page of Patriarcha. The first sentence of the book reads : 

Since the time that School-Divinity began to flourish there hath been 
a common opinion maintained, as well by Divines, as by divers other 
Learned Men, which affirms. 

Mankind is naturally endowed and born with Freedom from all Subjec- 
tion, and at liberty to choose what Form of Government it please: And that 
i the Power which any one Man hath over others, was at first bestowed according 
'^ to the descretion of the Multitude. 

This Tenet was first hatched in the Schools, and hath been foitered 
by all succeeding Papists for good Divinity. The Divines also of the 
Reformed Churches have entertained it, and the Common People 
everywhere tenderly embrace it, as being most plausible to Flesh and 
Blood, for that it prodigally distributes a Portion of Liberty to the 
meanest of the Multitude who magnifie Liberty, as if the height of 
Human Felicity were only to be found in it, never remembering that the 
desire of Liberty was the first cause of the Fall of Adam." 

Filmer was better known to laymen in America than Bellar- 
mine was. Students of government like George Mason and 
Thomas Jefferson could not have missed him. There was his 
name staring at them in the opening sentences of Sidney and 
Locke and scattered through the later pages. Mason and 



VIRGINIA DECLARATION OF RIGHTS 13 

Jefferson must have had the curiosity to look into the author 
whom their favorites abused so lustily and so continuously. 
Unhappily, the catalogue of Mason's library has not survived, 
but Jefferson's books are still kept together in the Library of 
Congress and among them is Patriarcha. I find it also in inven- 
tories of other libraries in Virginia, of the revolutionary period. 
Yet nothing which Filmer wrote himself had any influence upon 
Mason and Jefferson. He was a dead author and his doctrine 
had no interest for men who were convinced of the equal rights 
of men; but the quotation he gave from Bellarmine and his 
epitome of Bellarmine's doctrine seems to have lodged in their 
memory, to reappear in a new form in the Declarations which 
they wrote. Neither in Sidney nor in Locke nor in the writings 
of any other author with whom they were familiar is there as 
complete an epitome of the doctrine they announced. 

Soon after the committee met to frame the Virginia Declara- 
tion of Right, George Mason wrote out ten paragraphs of the 
Declaration and presented it to his colleagues. They added 
three more and the whole was handed in to the Convention where 
it underwent unimportant minor alterations, except as to the 
clause relating to religious liberty, which the Convention changed 
by making it a declaration for religious liberty instead of religious 
toleration. The first four paragraphs of Mason's committee 
draft are as follows: 

A Declaration of Rights, made by the Representatives of the good 
people of Virginia, assembled in full Convention, and reconmiended to 
posterity as the Basis and Foundation of their Government. 

That all men are born equally free and independent and have certain 
inherent natural Rights, of which they cannot, by any Compact, deprive 
or divest their posterity; among which are the Enjoyment of Life and 
Liberty, with the means of acquiring and possessing property, and 
pursuing and obtaining Happiness and Safety. 

That Power is, by God and nature, vested in, and consequently 
derived from the People; that Magistrates are their Trustees and Servants, 
and at all times amenable to them. 

That Government is, or ought to be instituted for the common 
Benefit and Security of the People, nation, or Community. Of ail the 
various modes and Forms of Government that is best, which is Capable 
of producing the greatest Degree of Happiness and safety, and is most 
effectually secured against the Danger of Mal-administration. And 
that whenever any Government shall be found inadequate, or contrary 
to these purposes, a Majority of the Community hath an indubitable. 



14 GAILLARD HUNT 

inalienable and indefeasible Right to reform, alter or abolish it, in such 
manner as shall be judged most conducive to the public weal." 

These clauses came from the Convention in the following form (italics marking 
the variations) : 

A declaration of rights made by the representatives of the good people of Virginia, 
assembled in full and free convention; which rights do pertain to them and their pos- 
terity, as the basis and foundation of government. 

Sec. 1. That all men are by nature equally free and independent and have 
certain inherent rights, of which, when they enter into a state of Society, they cannot, 
by any compact, deprive or divest their posterity; namely, the enjoyment of life and 
liberty, with the means of acquiring property, and pursuing and obtaining happiness 
and safety. 

Sec. 2. That all power is vested in, and consequently derived from, the people; 
that magistrates are their trustees and servants, and at all times amenable to them. 

Sec. 3. That government is, or ought to be, instituted for the common benefit, 
protection, and security of the people, nation or community; of all the various modes 
and forms of government, that is best which is capable of producing the greatest 
degree of happiness and safety, and is most effectually secured against the Danger 
of mal-administration; and that, when any government shall be found inadequate or 
contrary to these purposes, a majority of the community hath an indubitable, 
inalienable, and indefeasible right to reform, alter and abolish it, in such manner 
as shall be judged most conducive to the public weal. 

And the Declaration of Independence says: 

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created 
equal, that they are endowed by their creator with certain inalienable 
Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. 
That to secure these rights. Governments are instituted among men, 
deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. That 
whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, 
it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new 
Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its 
powers in such form as to them shall seem most likely to affect their 
Safety and Happiness. 

Were Mason and Jefferson conscious of their debt to Bellar- 
mine, or did they use Filmer's presentation of his doctrine 
without knowing that they were doing so? Did the Americans 
reaHze that they were staking their lives, their fortunes and their 
sacred honor in support of a theory of government which had 
come down to them as announced by a Catholic priest? We 
cannot answer these questions, but it should be a satisfaction to 
Catholics to know that the fundamental pronouncements upon 
which was built the greatest of modern revolutions, found their 
best support in the writings of a Prince of the Church. 

Gaillard Hunt, 
Washington, D. C. 

1* Mason Papers, Library of Congress. 



LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 



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LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 




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